Personal Development, Maximizing Productivity and Life Hacking

We’ve all experienced it: that surge of powerful motivation at the start of a project.  We’re on top of the world and feel unstoppable.

Yet somehow, after a few weeks, that motivation high has gone. New blogs, new year’s resolutions to diet and workout routines can soon become burdens as we lose our enthusiasm for them.

From the time we embark on a new project until we are deeply entrenched in following through with it long term, we go through a few different changes and emotional highs and lows: fluctuations that aren’t so different than what we experience elsewhere in our lives.

Read on as we consider these parallels, and then, using lessons from our emotional lives, discuss strategies for coping when our enthusiasm for a project fades.

Want to play video games and learn lessons you can apply elsewhere in life? Look no fruther than NCAA Football 09, in Dynasty Mode.

In Dynasty mode, you coach a college football program through multiple seasons and you can only improve your team long term by mastering the recruitment process.  Read on as I discuss goal setting, priotization and persistence: all lessons learned from playing NCAA Football 09.

Pop Quiz: What do you believe will make you happy?  A new car?  A promotion, a raise, perhaps?

While we all have different notions about what defines success and happiness, some common beliefs permeate our culture. One such belief is the ideal of the American Dream, the idea that anyone in the United States can achieve their goals, and material prosperity.

Society promotes the American Dream as an ideal to be aspired to - the type of life that we want to live, and the type of life we wish for our children.

Let’s take a step back and ask:  Will such a life, of achieving ones goals and material prosperity, ultimately make us happy?  And if not, what then are the keys the happiness?  Read on as we explore this question.

Following the theme of time-management in previous posts about paying myself first with my time, saving 10 hours a week by outsourcing my cooking, and my experiment outsourcing via virtual assistants, I’ve been wondering whether some of the things I do to save money are really just wasting my time.  Specifically, I wondered about waiting in long lines for cheaper gas.

I wondered though - if the lines are longer, is it worth it for how much I’m saving, or am I just wasting my time?

For the past couple months I have been noting how much longer it takes to fill up my tank at a cheaper gas station, and I decided to run the numbers and show you my results.